State’s final exchange totals surprisingly high

ATLANTA — More than 316,000 Georgians signed up for a health plan in the insurance exchange by the end of the enrollment period – more than doubling the state’s figure at the end of February, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced.

Georgia’s 127 percent enrollment growth since March 1 was rivaled by surges in several other states, including Texas’ 149 percent and Florida’s 123 percent, federal officials said.

“The good burst of enrollees at the last minute reflects the number of uninsured in those states,’’ said Bill Custer, a health insurance expert at Georgia State University.

It’s unknown at this point how many of the 316,543 Georgia enrollees have actually paid for coverage.

The final enrollment reporting period for the Affordable Care Act exchange was from Oct. 1 to March 31, but the numbers also include enrollment activity reported through April 19. Federal officials eased the deadline for those who got “in line’’ prior to the cutoff date but reported problems completing the process.

Georgia’s enrollment at the end of February was 139,371.

Overall, about 3.8 million Americans enrolled in the sixth and final reporting period, which began March 2. Most Americans who remained uninsured past the enrollment period face a financial penalty under the ACA.

Federal officials said Thursday that the percentage of enrollees who have paid premiums is not currently available.

Last month, Georgia insurance officials said state insurers received more than 220,000 applications for health coverage in the exchange as of March 31. But Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens said premiums have been received for only 107,581 of those policies, which cover 149,465 people.

Many late enrollees have until April 30 to pay the premium, though insurers have some flexibility on those payment dates.

Of the 36 states using the federal exchange under the ACA, the only ones surpassing Georgia’s final enrollment are Florida, with 983,775; Texas, with 733,757; North Carolina, with 357,584; and Pennsylvania, with 318,077. (Three of these four states are more populous overall than Georgia, and North Carolina has almost as big a population as the Peach State.)

The Georgia surge comes despite a new study pointing out that Georgia had the least amount of any state spent on consumer enrollment assistance per uninsured person.

Get Covered America, a campaign seeking to educate Americans about their health plan options, called the 316,000 figure “a wonderful milestone.”

“Still, our work is not done,’’ Dante McKay, Get Covered America’s Georgia state director, said in a statement. “We will continue to keep pace with the demand for further education across the state of Georgia as we apply best practices learned during the first open enrollment period to connect even more Georgians to health insurance coverage.”

The HHS report Thursday shows that of the Georgians selecting a health plan whose race or ethnicity is known, 41.4 percent are white, 38.6 percent African-American, 14.8 Asian and 3.6 percent Latino.

Overall enrollment in the exchange surpassed 8 million at the end of the first enrollment period, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced. Of those, 28 percent were young adults ages 18 to 34.

That’s an important demographic for health insurers, who say that sufficient numbers of young and healthy adults are needed to offset the financial risk of covering older, sicker individuals.

Georgia had a higher-than-average young enrollee figure, at 32 percent.

Female applicants constituted 57 percent of the Georgia total, higher than the national average of 54 percent. And 87 percent qualified for subsidies to help afford the premiums, compared with 85 percent nationally.

Nearly all the Georgians who went on the exchange and were eligible for subsidies signed up for a health plan, Custer said.

He said the 316,000 enrollees were a little less than he expected a year ago, but more than he would have predicted in January, after the technological problems plaguing the federal exchange website healthcare.gov late last year.

Graham Thompson of the Georgia Association of Health Plans told GHN recently that that the insurance industry recognized that subsidies “would be a tremendous driver of behavior. That has borne true.”

HHS also announced Thursday that more than 4.8 million additional individuals enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP (known as PeachCare in Georgia) through the end of March, compared to enrollment before the exchange opened.

The federal report says 91,914 Georgians – many of them children — were determined to be eligible for Medicare or PeachCare coverage through the exchange enrollment process.

But because of technological snags, it’s not known how many of these Georgians have joined these government insurance programs.

Georgia is one of more than 30 states that used the federal insurance exchange. But unlike roughly half of those states, Georgia is not able to process applicants into Medicaid and their children’s insurance program.

A Department of Community Health spokesman told GHN last month that people have called about enrollment in Medicaid, having been referred from the exchange. But Community Health said it did not have an exact enrollment number from this group.

Andy Miller is editor and co-founder of Georgia Health Network.